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We study a variation of vanilla stochastic gradient descent where the optimizer only has access to a Markovian sampling scheme. These schemes encompass applications that range from decentralized optimization with a random walker (token…

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) is a state-of-the-art Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling algorithm for drawing samples from smooth probability densities over continuous spaces. We study the variant most widely used in practice, Metropolized…

Stochastic reaction network models are often used to explain and predict the dynamics of gene regulation in single cells. These models usually involve several parameters, such as the kinetic rates of chemical reactions, that are not…

For large model spaces, the potential entrapment of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) based methods with spike-and-slab priors poses significant challenges in posterior computation in regression models. On the other hand, maximum a posteriori…

State space models (SSMs) provide a flexible framework for modeling complex time series via a latent stochastic process. Inference for nonlinear, non-Gaussian SSMs is often tackled with particle methods that do not scale well to long time…

Bayesian inference in the presence of an intractable likelihood function is computationally challenging. When following a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach to approximate the posterior distribution in this context, one typically…

Significant success has been realized recently on applying machine learning to real-world applications. There have also been corresponding concerns on the privacy of training data, which relates to data security and confidentiality issues.…

Gaussian processes are valuable tools for non-parametric modelling, where typically an assumption of stationarity is employed. While removing this assumption can improve prediction, fitting such models is challenging. In this work,…

Simulation Based Calibration (SBC) is applied to analyse two commonly used, competing Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms for estimating the posterior distribution of a stochastic volatility model. In particular, the bespoke 'off-set…

Bayesian inference via standard Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods is too computationally intensive to handle large datasets, since the cost per step usually scales like $\Theta(n)$ in the number of data points $n$. We propose the…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are often used for approximate inference inside learning, but their slow mixing can be difficult to diagnose and the approximations can seriously degrade learning. To alleviate these issues, we…

Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods are a widely used set of computational tools for inference in non-linear non-Gaussian state-space models. We propose a new SMC algorithm to compute the expectation of additive functionals recursively.…

Bayesian analysis often concerns an evaluation of models with different dimensionality as is necessary in, for example, model selection or mixture models. To facilitate this evaluation, transdimensional Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)…

Performing numerical integration when the integrand itself cannot be evaluated point-wise is a challenging task that arises in statistical analysis, notably in Bayesian inference for models with intractable likelihood functions. Markov…

The horseshoe prior is frequently employed in Bayesian analysis of high-dimensional models, and has been shown to achieve minimax optimal risk properties when the truth is sparse. While optimization-based algorithms for the extremely…

We show how to use Stein variational gradient descent (SVGD) to carry out inference in Gaussian process (GP) models with non-Gaussian likelihoods and large data volumes. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is extremely computationally intensive…

The tuning of stochastic gradient algorithms (SGAs) for optimization and sampling is often based on heuristics and trial-and-error rather than generalizable theory. We address this theory--practice gap by characterizing the large-sample…

In statistical analysis, Monte Carlo (MC) stands as a classical numerical integration method. When encountering challenging sample problem, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is a commonly employed method. However, the MCMC estimator is biased…

Fitting stochastic kinetic models represented by Markov jump processes within the Bayesian paradigm is complicated by the intractability of the observed data likelihood. There has therefore been considerable attention given to the design of…

Approximate Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) offers the promise of more rapid sampling at the cost of more biased inference. Since standard MCMC diagnostics fail to detect these biases, researchers have developed computable Stein discrepancy…